Politics is affecting dating and intimacy, expert says

Online dating expert Julie Spira said during an interview with “Rising” on Tuesday that politics is increasingly affecting people’s romantic lives, particularly among millennials.

Spira said that since President Trump’s election in 2016, politics have started to play a major role in millennials’ dating lives.

“Now we see politics at the top and it’s not just affecting how you date … politics has actually moved into the bedroom,” Spira told Hill.TV’s Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton.

Spira, who is currently on tour promoting her new book, “Love in the Age of Trump,” added that millennials now are starting to prioritize political compatibility over sex.

“Singles now, especially millennials singles, are more interested in having similar politics and talking about good politics than actually having good sex,” Spira said.

The dating site OkCupid told HuffPost last month that for the first time in its 15-year history, the overall number of women who choose shared political views over “good sex” doubled from 2016 to 2018. 

OkCupid’s chief marketing officer called the latest data “unprecedented.” 

“It’s truly, truly unprecedented the change in how people are using politics as a signal in dating,”  Melissa Hobley told HuffPost.

Spira echoed these comments, emphasizing that there has been a significant shift in core values among millennials. She said even though people are more open about their political beliefs in the online dating world, whether someone is a liberal or conservative is now much more of a dealbreaker.

The expert noted that people are more inclined to put things like “swipe left if you voted for Trump” in their dating profiles or wear a “Make America Great Again” hat in their profile picture to weed out potential matches who don’t share their same political views. 

— Tess Bonn


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